Jeff Morley's article in Politico today

[David Boylan]

Was Hunt still working for the CIA? Jeff Morley makes a pretty good case in his new book.

How does one interpret this?

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=103901#relPageId=82

[Paul Cummings]

4 hours ago, David Boylan said:

Was Hunt still working for the CIA? Jeff Morley makes a pretty good case in his new book.

How does one interpret this?

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=103901#relPageId=82

Clay Shaw?

[Benjamin Cole]

9 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Three things on Watergate. One is that the Nixon quote about who shot John was in reference to the Bay of Pigs, and that Morley has extended that into being about the JFK assassination, when it may very well have not been a reference to the JFK assassination. Two is that Hunt's being a mole is pretty silly, seeing as he was hired because he had ongoing connections to the CIA, and could use them to get access to materials (such as disguises) that he could then use while being Nixon's personal spook. These CIA connections were also helpful in the assembly of the "Plumbers" unit, some of whom thought they were working for the CIA, and not just Nixon. These men all kept their silence and were willing to rot in jail for the CIA/Nixon (which they largely saw as equivalent seeing as the Dems to their minds had "lost" the Bay of Pigs, and would almost certainly make nice with Castro.). But McCord had worked with Mitchell and knew damn well who and what was behind it all. Three is that the United States is not a monarchy and that the President does not have ultimate authority to look through every file and/or falsify files and put them in the record just because he feels like it. To my understanding Helms smelled that Nixon wanted access to top secret info so he could use it for political gain, and that Helms pushed back, only to give in to Nixon's wishes. In my opinion this was the right thing to do, but that upon giving in to Nixon's wishes he should have immediately informed members of the Senate Intelligence committee what was happening. 

Now, two points on Trump. One is that upon his potential return to power, he plans on re-making the government so that every employee in the executive branch is personally beholden to him and personally loyal to him. The litmus test for their continued employment would be whether or not they think he won the last election. That's crazy town but also familiar. In Haldeman's book he relates that Nixon planned a similar purge in his second term, but that these plans were de-railed by Watergate. In any event, I think most Americans would agree that it's not a good idea for a President to surround himself with unqualified and marginally-qualified sycophants, at the expense of seasoned professionals. Such a thing is a recipe for fascism/disaster. Two is that your statement about the Proud Boys is deceptive. It wasn't 10 to 20 Proud Boys vs. 3,500 officers. It was 10-20 Proud Boys mixed in with what? 5,000 rioters...against a thousand or so officers under orders not to shoot...seeing as these rioters were supporters of the sitting President and were there at his urging. Although I haven't followed the investigations as close as I'd like, it was clear from the get-go that there was a lot of foot-dragging among the military about supporting the police and helping to fight the riot, and that what little help arrived came at the urging of Mike Pence, who saw that Trump was behind the riot and knew if he didn't act nothing would get done. This is what you should be worried about, IMO. We had a President who'd lost the faith of his cabinet, but they wouldn't invoke the 25th amendment when they saw he was grossly derelict in his duties, and was actively seeking the physical harm of congress and the potential murder of his vice-president. 

So, in short, the real threat is not not the "deep state." The real threat is the obsequious nature of suck-ups, who will let a President indulge his whims and revenge fantasies, at the possible expense of democracy. 

Two is that Hunt's being a mole is pretty silly, seeing as he was hired because he had ongoing connections to the CIA, and could use them to get access to materials (such as disguises) that he could then use while being Nixon's personal spook.--PS

I dunno. Hunt was sending sealed pouches to the CIA, while working in the White House? But he was not a mole? 

Three is that the United States is not a monarchy and that the President does not have ultimate authority to look through every file--PS

The elected President must have the right to look through every federal file. Your position is plainly wrong. If someone is concerned the President will falsify the file, then make a true copy with a timed stamp on it, and witnessed by a public notary etc. Send over the file, and tell the President true copies have been made. 

----

On 1/6, there is no way the unarmed protestors should have been able to breach the Capitol, after days and days of shrieks from everybody that there might be agitation that day. 

I am not satisfied with what the Secret Service did on 11/22, and I am not satisfied with what the 3,500-officer Capitol Police did on 1/6. 

----

I disagree with you on the threat of the Deep State.

Ponder Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Laos, Indonesia, the JFKA, the RFKA, Iran-Contra...Russiagate? 

Russiagate has been revealed as an "elaborate hoax," says Bret Stephens of The New York Times, finally assenting to the view of Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate and other pretty sharp independent journalists. 

You can justifiably loath Trump...but really, if the Deep State can do this to Trump, next it can be....who? 

[W. Niederhut]

7 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

     Based on my reading of Jim Hougan's book, Secret Agenda, and a number of previous commentaries on the subject by forum members here, I beg to differ with Pat Speer's (above) thesis that Watergate wasn't, essentially, a CIA op-- with a major assist by the CIA's mouthpiece at WaPo, Bob Woodward. 

    (Apologies in advance, Pat, if I'm misinterpreting your position.)

    The burglars, obviously, weren't all the President's men.  My question (above) was whether Nixon and Mitchell believed, before the Watergate burglary botch job, that CIA men like Hunt and McCord were actually assisting Nixon's re-election campaign (CREEP) with their dirty tricks expertise-- only to realize later that the CIA had double-crossed them and put them over a barrel.

    Here's a salient Peter Dale Scott reference on the subject of CIA motives for setting up Nixon in Watergate, from an old forum Secret Agenda thread, posted by Robert Montenegro in May of 2020.  (Italics mine.)

 

In Professor Peter Dale Scott's "The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America", we find the following startling information about USN Lt. Woodward's boss, ADM. Moorer on pages 46-48:

QUOTE — "...Other leaks of Nixon-Kissinger excesses in foreign policy, notably the December 1971 of the 'tilt toward Pakistan,' provoked frenzied investigation by the White House Plumbers. Eventually this investigation revealed that the source of the leak, navy yeoman Charles Radford, had been systematically stealing White House documents and passing them, via his navy superior, Admiral Robert Welander, to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Admiral Thomas Moorer. In retrospect, it seems clear that the primary JCS motive for conspiratorial spying on the White House was dislike of Nixon's and above all Kissinger's policies of detente and coexistence with the Soviet bloc and China. As historian Stanley Kutler wrote in his Wars of Watergate: 'Moorer bitterly remembered what he regarded as foolish and soft policies toward North Vietnam. His successor as chief naval operations, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., came close to accusing Nixon and Kissinger of treason and Kissinger of being a Soviet sympathizer'..."

"...James McCord, the principle architect of the Watergate break-in, which was surely set up to be disclosed, expressed a paranoia about Kissinger that exceeded even that of Moorer and Zumwalt. In a newsletter he put out in the aftermath of Watergate, 'McCord put forward a right-wing conspiracy theory that the Rockefeller family was lunging for complete control over the government's critical national security functions, using the Council on Foreign Relations and Henry Kissinger as its surrogates.' McCord's mind-set is of interest not only because he was a principal conspirator in the Watergate break-in, but also because of his role as an Air Force Reserve colonel in an obscure program of the Office of Emergency Preparedness (the predecessor to FEMA). His group was responsible for contingency plans, 'in the event of a national emergency...for imposing censorship [and] preventive detention of civilian 'security risks,' who would be placed in military 'camps'..."

"...Much more threatening to the presidency was probably the opposition of James Angleton, head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton eventually came to "pronounce Kissinger 'objectively, a Soviet agent.' But Angleton had a more immediate reason to oppose Nixon after November 20, 1972, the day Nixon at Camp David notified Richard Helms he would be replaced as head of CIA. Helms and Angleton had been two of the last survivors of the Dulles "inner circle" within CIA..." — END QUOTE.

 

Well, it looks like my questions and response (above) to Pat Speer's Watergate-wasn't-a-CIA-op thesis got leap-frogged today by...oh no... not another Benjamin Cole denial of Russia-gate !!

Pat, I thought the forum consensus about Secret Agenda and Watergate  -- by such luminaries as James DiEugenio, Shane O'Sullivan, and Joseph McBride-- was that Hunt, McCord, et.al., and the CIA had conspired to put Nixon over a barrel with the bungled Watergate burglary.

 

P.S.  Yo, Ben... here's yet another detailed reference for you about the Mueller Report and Russia-gate.

Key Findings of the Mueller Report | ACS (acslaw.org)

Key Findings of the Mueller Report

 

 

[Pat Speer]

44 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Well, it looks like my questions and response (above) to Pat Speer's Watergate-wasn't-a-CIA-op thesis got leap-frogged today by...oh no... not another Benjamin Cole denial of Russia-gate !!

Pat, I thought the forum consensus about Secret Agenda and Watergate  -- by such luminaries as James DiEugenio, Shane O'Sullivan, and Joseph McBride-- was that Hunt, McCord, et.al., and the CIA had conspired to put Nixon over a barrel with the bungled Watergate burglary.

 

P.S.  Yo, Ben... here's yet another detailed reference for you about the Mueller Report and Russia-gate.

Key Findings of the Mueller Report | ACS (acslaw.org)

Key Findings of the Mueller Report

 

 

No, there's no consensus. I think Secret Agenda is designed to get Nixon off the hook by blaming everyone's favorite boogeyman, the CIA. As stated, it makes no sense at all. If the plot was to set up Nixon, it failed miserably because evidently no one told the burglars they were supposed to finger Nixon before his re-election, and before he could fire Helms. 

P.S. There was a time when this forum had an active forum on Watergate. Douglas Caddy and Alfred Baldwin joined. As I recall, they were both quite dismissive that McCord and/or Hunt would deliberately get caught, and totally disrupt their lives...for what? To frame Nixon for something everyone agrees he did. Well, even before the Watergate break-in, Nixon had engaged in numerous impeachable offenses. No mousetrap-like plot was necessary. A few leaks would have done the trick. 

Edited July 30, 2022 by Pat Speer

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

No, there's no consensus. I think Secret Agenda is designed to get Nixon off the hook by blaming everyone's favorite boogeyman, the CIA. As stated, it makes no sense at all. If the plot was to set up Nixon, it failed miserably because evidently no one told the burglars they were supposed to finger Nixon before his re-election, and before he could fire Helms. 

P.S. There was a time when this forum had an active forum on Watergate. Douglas Caddy and Alfred Baldwin joined. As I recall, they were both quite dismissive that McCord and/or Hunt would deliberately get caught, and totally disrupt their lives...for what? To frame Nixon for something everyone agrees he did. Well, even before the Watergate break-in, Nixon had engaged in numerous impeachable offenses. No mousetrap-like plot was necessary. A few leaks would have done the trick. 

Well, Pat, perhaps you're correct about the absence of a consensus.  My mistake.

I just found a 2018 post from Mr. Caddy (on this forum) in which he described his interactions with E. Howard Hunt on the evening of the burglary.  He mentioned that Hunt was quite distraught about his Plumber colleagues' being arrested at the Watergate Hotel that night-- hardly the state of mind of a man who had just hatched a "successful" plot to bring down the President. 

I then re-read Jim Hougan's recent Watergate article at WhoWhatWhy.com in which he describes the question of whether there was a CIA plot to oust Nixon from the White House as "the $64,000 question."